of cookies and milk and storytime…
Hey guys, did you know Ramadan is a month of worship and forgiveness, and that it is a time when the shaytan/shayateen are locked up? It is also super duper close by! There are kids all over the world just as excited about Ramadan as I am waiting for it to come, so I made these. I sometimes like to keep track of things I do in Ramadan. It makes me feel happy knowing I did all those things. I hope you enjoy them!
These were created by Zainab Salman Jameel on 20/ 03/2022.
Just discovered these online courses for kids. I was looking up edX and Udemy for myself and came across this stuff for children. Some are free, some not. I think they are a great resource especially for children who want to explore interests that go beyond basic academics.
http://www.courses4you.com/online-courses-for-kids.html
http://www.e-learningforkids.org/
I haven’t explored the sites completely yet. I’m far too excited! Thought I’d share it all anyway!
Six years ago I wanted to teach my first child about Allah. I didn’t know where to begin. I’m sure a lot of you out there have faced similar challenges. There’s a huge gap in the market for children’s books that explain who Allah is and focus on helping children understand how He effects their lives.
Author Zainab Jones has set out to fill that gap and based on what I’ve learnt, we can look forward to an entire series dedicated to teaching children more about Allah!
Masha Allah! Tabarak Allah!
I’ve had the amazing opportunity to interview her and ask a few questions I’ve had on my mind.
May Allah bless her efforts greatly!
Read on to see what she had to say.
What inspired you to write “Mommy Who is Allah?”
I was raised in the Presbyterian Church where by I went to Sunday school from a very young age. We would sit and listen to Bible related stories, do arts and crafts, play themed related games, and have a snack. It was the highlight of my week. Mind you this was in the early 70’s but the experience had a huge positive affect on me. I began to pray at a very young age. But, after living in the Middle East where religion is taught at school in a more dogmatic setting, my children were turned off. Moreover, young children are not exposed to any type of fun spiritual experiences unless Mom creates that environment at home. So, I wanted to create a story that would fit our Islamic Aqeedah/doctrine while inspiring the love of Allah through a positive playful experience.
How long did it take for you to write the story?
This is my first children’s book and to be honest it only took me a few hours. It was really raw when it went to the publisher’s and there were many modifications that needed to be made. I’m learning a lot about writing children’s books along the way.
Why did you decide to publish your story?
I was hoping to spark a feeling in children that would begin to kindle a personal relationship between children and Allah.
Were there any obstacles you faced in getting published? If so, what were they?
I’ve been asked this question before and to be totally honest, Allah has made it quite easy for me to get the work published. I’ve really had no obstacles or challenges. The doors were opened with very little effort on my part. Ahumdulillah.
Do you write regularly?
Yes, I write a lot of poetry. I enjoy the nuance and appreciate the adaptation of the English language and subtleties in meanings, especially that of metaphor. I’ve also written a number of Interfaith and political compositions in my younger years. None of which were published which has been for the best.
Do you have a blog?
Yes, I’ve just started a new blog to accommodate this current project. www.mommywhoisallah.wordpress.com. I had a blog that featured my poetry called Poetry and Prose. I also had a blog whereby I was working on a book that would highlight the similarities between the Abrahamic religions called, “Beloved Jerusalem, Finding Common Ground.” I discontinued the blogs but may return to those projects at a later time.
What’s your favorite writing spot?
To be honest, anywhere. I sat and wrote a poem in Half – Priced Books just the other night, entitled “Sisters in Faith.”
Do you plan to write more books?
Yes. Right now I’m engulfed in learning how to compose exciting children’s stories that will engage children in learning about Allah through focusing on one or two similar attributes at a time. We ultimately fall in love with another person’s characteristics and in this case Allah has all the most beautiful names and attributes. But, we as parents and educators are missing the opportunity to impart our love for Allah to children in a way they, too, can relate.
So, “Mommy, Who Is Allah?” is intended to be a series. Book 2 is complete and focuses on Allah as Al Ahad Allahu As Samad. The story is between a mother and daughter and has more of a Junie B. Jones tone to it. Book 3 is in the stage of rough draft and focuses on Allah as Al Rahman, Al Raheem. This story is also about a mother and daughter conversation but with more of a cause and effect setting attractive to early elementary aged children.
Do you have any advice to offer aspiring authors?
There are so many esteemed authors out there and at this point I might be more in need of their advice along with other aspiring authors. It seems to me that good readers make the best writers. So, read a lot and write as often as possible.
Which part of the story do you like the most?
There are several elements of the story I like from a teacher’s point of view. The kinesthetic teaching tools and the introduction of community helpers that compliment a pre-k curriculum. But, my favorite part is the meaningful relationship between the mother and her son that is displayed when he asks her the big question. “Mommy, Who Is Allah?’. She then looks deeply into his big brown eyes and responds in a soft tone filled with love. These moments are often lost while trying to figure out how to explain this or that. Plus, life with work and children is hectic and goes by so fast. As parents we often look at our children who are older now and wish we had those moments back again. I get to relive some of those moments in the story.
What do you like best about being a published author?
“I guess it’s a small kind of accomplishment.” Elizabeth Bennet, said in the book, “Pride and Prejudice.” I see it as a new profession and one of which I will need to learn the skill of storytelling. I can teach children to write compositions all day long and I can write on whatever topic I might be learning. I love writing poetry but storytelling is a different type of literary craft whereby I will need to become better accomplished. So, I see this as the start of learning a new art form. And I pray that I will improve in the field. In Sha Allah.
Don’t forget to check out “Mommy, Who is Allah?” Click right here to visit the page now!
For more updates on the project, visit Zainab’s blog by clicking here.
Look out for more book reviews and some exciting new projects at Ponies and Pizza, Insha Allah!
I think my eldest was still about one. No, wait I was 16 and terribly bored in high school.
Yeah, my mother told me about someone she knew who was homeschooling her teenage daughters. I looked it up online. The idea of studying at my own pace fascinated me. Sometimes everything we studied felt so redundant. Once we were done learning about something we had to keep restudying it to ace our exams. I would have loved to move on to more challenging things.
Fast forward to 2010. I wanted our little boy to go to an arabic school, so he could learn the language by full immersion. This adorable little school was a short walk away and our son could go once he was 3. I promised my husband I would teach him everything else myself, I just wanted our children to learn arabic.
We moved away from this area and going to that school wasn’t an option any more. I came across right brain learning and Brill Kids. I loved the idea that Glenn Doman promoted. My little boy was going to be a little genius and would read when he was 2.
That started the era of power point flash cards. We did power point sessions twice a day while both my babies snuggled in my lap. I made my own power points.I’ll upload those some day! I tried to schedule everything. I looked at blocks of free time I could create around my housekeeping schedule. I still have some of the papers.
I think I developed a scheduling method that worked for me really well. I’d love to share that in the future insha Allah.
Did I follow the schedule to the letter? Not always. I often improvised. I sometimes cried over not being able to follow it. I was listening to GTD by David Allen and I really wanted to be organised. All these time management strategies didn’t seem to apply to moms. Didn’t anyone understand that babies don’t always follow a schedule?
I was also travelling every weekend. My husband and I made it a point to enjoy ourselves whenever we had the chance during the weekdays. So there were days that he’d come home and say, “Wanna go out?”, and I’d just say, “Sure, let’s do it!”.
There were also the days that he came home late after the children had already gone to bed.
It felt like there was so much happening all the time. I would catch the bus whenever I wanted to go out alone, I didn’t have a drivers license. Nothing stopped me, not even the heat. But then I didn’t go out alone that much. I was actually pretty content in the quiet tranquil of my home. Going out with 2 under 3 was not easy. Someone always cried or needed to be nursed. I would occasionally walk to the park. We didn’t go to any playgroups. I felt my kids had enough fun once a week with all their cousins at their grandparents’ house.
So I cooked and cleaned, laundered, made slides and scribbled on paper. Then in the summer of 2011, I decided I wanted to homeschool for real and plan out the year for my 2.5 year old!
I strove so hard to do everything perfectly, I was often internally bitter despite that. Bitter about the spotless home I worked so hard to keep, bitter that I didn’t have access to books, bitter that I didn’t have enough time to read stories and so tired. These were the early years, I had only 2 kids, I was full of zeal and I was a bit younger too. I had the energy to keep going.
With all the internal struggles buried in my mind I set out to plan a real homeschool year!
This is for all my friends who’ve asked me how I do it.
The number of times I’ve asked people the same question! When I get asked that now, I realise how far we’ve come. If you ask the people I knew back when we started, they’d tell you exactly how worried I was that Monday afternoon when I trekked to the lighthouse at the Corniche park in Abu Dhabi.
I’ve been homeschooling since my eldest was 2 years old. That makes it almost 6 years since I first started. The way I’ve worked with the kids has evolved over the years. We had to adjust timings and methods to our growing family and my stamina to deal with everything.
I still have the schedules I drew up. I have schedules that I made before the kids and after they were born.
Children grow and change so fast that what works for 6 months may not work beyond that. I’ve readjusted around changing nap times and potty training. I’ve cut back during pregnancies and language learning opportunities, such as the 2 years my son went to an all Arabic Quran school. He learnt how to speak Arabic and memorised a whole chapter while he was there. I worked on everything else after he came home from school.
We did so much learning on the ipad while my daughter was covered from head to toe in eczema. She sat in my lap while I we read anything and my toddler climbed all over us.
The first year my son was homeschooling full time, my 2nd went to the same school while my toddler clung to my legs, super clingy in her terrible twos. We spent a lot of time with a white board on the floor, me scribbling away and making up stories to make math fun.
When there were no books, I wrote my own stories. When my toddler climbed my back, I’d rock her while explaining things to the others.
My house was often a mess. I struggled to figure out how to keep the clock work running while doing this homeschooling thing. I would figure things out and then something would slip, someone would get sick, or there was an urgent errand and my schedule would get messed up.
I eventually figured it out. But it wasn’t always so clear cut. There was a long learning curve. And it was full of tears and back aches. Sometimes I feel like I’m still figuring out. Like the other day, after having a great morning, my 4 year old threw a tantrum over something I forgot to do for her and she cried and wailed while I got everyone in the car. I lost my temper, and shouted. After a few minutes on the road, I finally realised I have to stop expecting things to be perfect someday. There is no such thing as a perfect morning, a perfect day. I prayed to Allah to forgive me for trying to make things perfect, that ability belongs to Him alone.
One of the things that I always loved reading about was how other people did it, and thats why I’m going to write about how we did it insha Allah. Maybe I’ll throw in some schedule making advice, but I really want to share the phases that we went through from different aspects, different ages, family commitments, cooking, housework, illnesses and pregnancies. If there is anything anyone would like to know please mention it somewhere, on my facebook page or leave a comment and I’ll try to to include that as well.
For now, I’d like to finish my tea while its still hot.
My son Abdullah would like to share his first published story. You can write your own stories too at Story Jumper.Read this free book made on StoryJumper
My oldest hated writing.
Words of course.
I’m not sure why.
So I decided not to pressure him. His stories were always short and concise even if he were dictating them to me. It bothered me. Especially when other boys around him simply wrote.
He knew what he learnt, so I tried to make him produce some form of work. Labelling, drawing, even dictating to me. Sometime past the age of seven, there was a breakthrough. I think he simply got comfortable with writing, holding a pencil. The only thing I remember doing to help him, was the light written work he had to do every day.
Maybe thats what loosened up those hand muscles. Whatever it was, it helped. All I need to do now is work on his motivation. I guess for a while all the stories are going to be about cars and warriors…
Once when he was six I found him lying on his bed, simply staring at the ceiling. When asked, he told me he was imagining things. He was day dreaming. I’m not a huge fan of lazing away a day dreaming on your bed, but this was fine. He imagined things. Racing, driving, running, whatever he’s told me he dreams about, the best part is that he uses his imagination even if he doesn’t want to talk about it. Some day he will itch to see it on paper.
Knowing the mechanics of writing from an early age doesn’t necessarily make a good writer. Encouraging creativity does.
So dream on dear, dream on.
This blog is something I started just to get an idea going. Now that I’m getting into the habit of writing I think I might just have time to start writing some downloadable children’s stories. Let’s see how it goes.
I’ve finally finished writing my story. Its been a long wait. I’m scared and apprehensive but insha Allah its time to get this ball rolling!
I could use an editor and some honest feedback.
After years of writing for a children’s magazine I would love to see my work in print with its very own illustration.
My mom always knew I would write and what it meant to me. Sadly, I kept pushing in other directions. So, Mama I’m glad you believed in me. I’m here now ready to make some big changes!
I don’t know how and where to start, the options are a bit overwhelming!
Here we go…
I remember back when I started homeschooling, I would look up information for about an hour and I’m pretty sure my blood pressure went up to an abnormal level and my digestive system really couldn’t take it. My eyes would blur and my head would spin and then I’d try to regain my hold on reality. Information overload! So many people homeschooling and doing so much!
So here’s a healthier approach. Set goals, break them into the steps that need to be taken to reach those goals and find resources to meet those goals. Thats how I plan a new curriculum for each of my kids at the beginning of every year.
Here’s one place to get a pre prepared list of resources and activities.
This place really helped us along in our earlier homeschooling years. There are a few more that I would like to mention but later insha Allah. I was just about to go through this site as back up for a topic I’m not sure how to approach, so I thought I would share it.
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Just a muslimah struggling with Bipolar Depression
We are a group of families living in Qatar and learning at home who come together to celebrate our diverse world.
...growing together
Ponies and Pizza 